A Question for Big Publishers - Why Do We Have to Wait for Paperbacks? - by Ali Bacon
Big books from monthly book-clubs (growing dusty!) In my childhood everything- even Mallory Towers! - was in hardback, and in my early married life I indulged in a book club (remember them?) which delivered a chunky novel once a month. I think I can pin down my change of heart over hardbacks to when I asked my young teenage daughter for a copy of the newly published Donna Tart ( The Little Friend ) for Christmas, on the basis it wouldn’t be too big a drain on her pocket money. Being out of the book-buying habit at the time, I'd missed that it was only out in hardback and was filled with guilt as I unwrapped the unwieldy and expensive brute. From then on, I have never chosen to buy fiction in hardback. (Non-fiction, poetry and illustrated books are a different matter). A novel in my mind is either e-book or tree-book, and a tree-book is a paperback. A ...